Fighting Temeraire Read online

  THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR AND THE SHIP THAT INSPIRED J. M. W. TURNER’S MOST BELOVED PAINTING

  SAM WILLIS

  THE HEARTS OF OAK TRILOGY

  This is the first book of the Hearts of Oak trilogy, which explores three of the most iconic and yet largely unexplored stories of the ‘Great Age of Sail’. The Fighting Temeraire, Admiral Benbow and The Glorious First of June are the biographies of a ship, a man and a battle that will splice together to form a narrative of an era that stretches from the English Civil War of the 1640s to the coming of steam two centuries later. This ‘Great Age of Sail’ was once written about in heroic terms but many of those legends have since been overlooked. The details of the stories themselves have become confused and the reasons behind the formation of those legends ignored. With more than a century of professional naval history to draw from together with new access to previously restricted archives, now is the time to look afresh at those stories of heroism from the perspective of the modern historian; now is the time to understand how and why The Fighting Temeraire, Admiral Benbow and The Glorious First of June became legends.

  Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,

  We always are ready; Steady, boys, steady!

  We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.

  D. GARRICK, Heart of Oak (1759)

  Acknowledgements

  This book could not have been produced without the help of a number of people. I am particularly grateful to Professor Sam Smiles, a world-renowned Turner scholar who is so generous with his knowledge and time. Jeremy Michell, Doug McArthy and Alex Fullerlove at the National Maritime Museum along with the staff of the Caird Library were also very helpful. Emma Strouts at Christie’s has, once again, helped me gain access to some little-known images and objects. My grandfather, Commander Derek Willis, read this through in draft and made many valuable comments, as did Andrew Bond, who continues to be a guiding light. And of course there is Torsy; always there and always certain.

  For Tors

  ‘Nothing could be finer.’*

  *Admiral Collingwood to Captain Harvey of the Temeraire, 28 October 1805

  The fighting Temeraire

  Built of a thousand trees,

  Lunging out her lightenings,

  And beetling o’er the seas

  HERMAN MELVILLE, The Temeraire, 1866

  FRONTISPIECE:

  Title page of log of HMS Temeraire, 10 July 1805 – 5 December 1805

  LIST OF MAPS

  1. The Western Mediterranean and Cadiz.

  2. Western France.

  3. The Caribbean and Cuba.

  4. The Baltic.

  5. The Thames.

  LOG BOOK IMAGES

  (The National Archives, Kew)

  1. Log of HMS Namur 4 August 1759.

  2. Log of HMS Warspight 18 August 1759.

  3. Log of HMS Temeraire 12 August 1762.

  4. Log of HMS Temeraire 19 April 1799.

  5. Log of HMS Temeraire 22 May 1800.

  6. Log of HMS Temeraire 5 December 1801.

  7. Log of HMS Temeraire 22 October 1805.

  8. Log of HMS Victory 13 June 1809.

  9. Log of HMS Temeraire title page 12 November 1836–30 June 1838.

  10. Log of HMS Temeraire 31 March 1838.

  List of Illustrations

  SECTION 1

  1. Admiral Boscawen’s report of the killed and wounded at the Battle of Lagos, 20 August 1759. (The National Archives)

  2. Admiral Edward Boscawen by Joshua Reynolds, c.1755. (National Portrait Gallery)

  3. Admiralty draught of the captured La Téméraire, 1759. (National Maritime Museum)

  4. A contemporary print of the British landing forces approaching Havana, 7 June 1762. (Reproduced from The London Magazine, 1763)

  5. The Capture of Havana (1762), by Dominic Serres (1770–5). (National Maritime Museum)

  6. Chatham Dockyard by Joseph Farrington, 1785–94. (National Maritime Museum)

  7. The launch of HMS Temeraire, II September 1798, from the original, now lost, by Philip Burgoyne. (G. Uden, The Fighting Temeraire (Oxford, 1961), fig. 1)

  8. Figures of Atlas from the quarter gallery of HMS Temeraire. (G. Uden, The Fighting Temeraire (Oxford, 1961), fig. 5)

  9. The prisoner-of-war model of HMS Temeraire, kept in the Wool House museum, Southampton. (Local and Maritime Collections Wool House Museum, Southampton)

  10. Admiralty draught of HMS Temeraire, 1798. (National Maritime Museum)

  11. HMS Temeraire by Geoff Hunt. (Geoff Hunt Artist Partners)

  SECTION 2

  12. Portraits of the Temeraire mutineers, from sketches taken at their trial. (J. Egerton, Turner: The Fighting Temeraire (London, 1995), p. 25)

  13. Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey by L. F. Abbott, c.1806. (National Maritime Museum)

  14. A contemporary print showing Eliab Harvey ‘clearing the deck of the French and Spaniards’ at Trafalgar. (National Maritime Museum)

  15. Order of Battle issued by Nelson, 10 October 1805. (British Library)

  16. The Battle of Trafalgar by Clarkson Stanfield, 1836. (The Crown Estate/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  17. A drawing of the first stage of the Battle of Trafalgar. (National Maritime Museum)

  18. Eliab Harvey’s coat of arms. (The College of Arms)

  19. Sketch of the Temeraire by John Livesay, made as she lay at Portsmouth on her return from the Battle of Trafalgar, December 1805. (Royal Naval Museum Portsmouth)

  20. Gunboat attack on HMS Melpomene, 23 May 1809. (National Maritime Museum)

  21. A survey of Nargen Island, drawn from the decks of HMS Temeraire, 1810. (British Library)

  SECTION 3

  22. A view of hulks on the Tamar, Plymouth, by Turner, 1812. (Petworth House, Sussex /The Bridgeman Art Library)

  23. A view of the prison hulks at Portsmouth by the French convict Louis Garneray, 1810. (National Maritime Museum)

  24. Stern detail of the prisoner-of-war model of HMS Ocean. (Science & Society Picture Library)

  25. The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire by Turner, 1817. (Tate London)

  26. The Battle of Trafalgar by Turner, 1822–4. (National Maritime Museum)

  27. The Fighting Temeraire Tugged To Her Last Berth To Be Broken Up, 1838, by Turner. (National Gallery, London / The Bridgeman Art Library)

  28. Peace – Burial at Sea by Turner, 1842. (Tate London)

  29. J. T. Willmore’s engraving The Old Temeraire, 1845. (National Maritime Museum)

  30. Gong stand made of oak from the Temeraire. (The Royal Collection © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)

  31. The Temeraire shown in her role as guardship of the Medway by Edward Cooke, 1833. (Victoria & Albert Museum)

  32. The Temeraire shown at John Beatson’s yard in Rotherhithe by William Beatson, his younger brother, September 1838. (National Maritime Museum)

  33. The Temeraire at Beatson’s yard, Rotherhithe, 1838–9. (National Maritime Museum)

  34. Neptune by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1824. (Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images/ The Bridgeman Art Library)

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  Preface

  1. The Escaping Téméraire

  2. The Captured Téméraire

  3. The Amphibious Temeraire

  4. The New Temeraire

  5. The Blockading Temeraire

  6. The Mutinous Temeraire

  7. The Trafalgar Temeraire

  8. The Baltic and Iberian Temeraire

  9. The Retired Temeraire

  10. The Fighting Temeraire

  Postscript

  Epilogue: On Iconic Warships

  APPENDIX I: Ship Diagrams

  APPENDIX II: The crew of HMS Temeraire at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

  APPENDIX III: Poems and Songs

  Glossary

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  The Western Mediterranean and Cadiz

  Maps

  Western France

  The Caribbean and Cuba

  The Baltic

  The Thames

  Preface

  In August 2005, BBC Radio 4 ran a poll to find the nation’s favourite painting. It was won by Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire Tugged To Her Last Berth To Be Broken Up, 1838, and it was won by a landslide: it received over a quarter of all votes cast, fighting off Constable’s The Hay Wain and other equally well-known works by Manet, Hockney and Van Gogh. Turner was a genius whose techniques revolutionized art history, and The Fighting Temeraire is his masterpiece. It is one of the most iconic images of the ages of both sail and steam, and is one of the greatest works of art ever created by a Western artist.

  For some it is popular quite simply because it is familiar, but for others much of its allure lies in the story that it tells. Today it hangs in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, only yards from Nelson’s Column, a monument that commemorates Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Both the painting and the statue are less than a mile from St Paul’s Cathedral, where Turner and Nelson are buried within feet of each other: Britain’s most famous artist and Britain’s most famous admiral are intimately linked in both past and present by this painting, a painting whose significance grips the nation as surely in the twenty-first century as it did when it was painted in 1838. It is a story that unites the art of war as practised by Nelson with the art of war as depicted by Turner and, as such, it ranges across British cultural hist
ory in ways that other stories do not. And yet the story behind the painting has only ever been partially told.1

  To tell it properly, one must go back as far as the Seven Years War, fought at sea between Britain and France between 1756 and 1763, for the full story of the Temeraire is the story not of one ship, but of two. The Temeraire in Turner’s painting was actually the second ship in the Royal Navy to carry that name, but it is impossible to tell her story satisfactorily without explaining how the name came to be British at all, and how and why it was chosen for the prestigious three-decked 98-gun warship built at Chatham in 1793. It is also important to distinguish between the two as there was some confusion over which Temeraire is depicted in Turner’s painting: she was mistakenly identified by some of the earliest reviewers as the first ship, the French Téméraire which was captured in 1759. She was startlingly different from her successor in appearance, but on paper can only be distinguished by the accents in her name.

  The result is a detailed picture of British maritime power at two of its most significant peaks in the age of sail, the climaxes of both the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars. It takes us from the Mediterranean to the Channel; from the Western Approaches to the Caribbean; and from the Baltic to the Atlantic Iberian coast. It covers every conceivable aspect of life in the sailing navy, with particular emphasis on amphibious warfare, disease, victualling, blockade, mutiny and, of course, fleet battle, for it was at Trafalgar that the Temeraire really won her fame. She broke through the French and Spanish line directly astern of Nelsons flagship, HMS Victory, and, for more than three hours, had two of the enemy’s line-of-battle ships lashed to her. She saved the Victory at a crucial moment in the battle, and fought until her sides ran ‘wet with the long runlets of English blood . . . those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign dropped.’2 For her bravery, she was the only British ship singled out for praise by Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood after the battle. Turner’s painting is a memorial to this magnificent ship in the poignant final hours of her life afloat. ‘Never more’, wrote the contemporary art critic John Ruskin, ‘shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding.’3 This was the poetry of the moment that inspired Turner.

  Alfred Thayer Mahan, the most influential naval historian the world has ever seen, declared that ‘distinguished ships have a personality only less vivid than that of the men who fought them’. They do indeed. Each has a story to tell and many believe that of the Temeraire to be the finest of them all. It ends today in Room 34 of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where a steady stream of visitors gazes at her beauty on Turner’s canvas. But it must begin over a thousand miles away and two hundred and fifty years ago, in the dining room of a Spanish palace, on a hot and dusty evening in August 1759, where Admiral Edward Boscawen was having his dinner.

  1.

  The Escaping Téméraire

  AUGUST 1759

  It was August 1759, and Admiral of the Blue Edward Boscawen had been invited to dinner by Francisco Bucareli y Ursua, Governor of San Roque, a small Spanish town with a monastery at its heart no more than five kilometres from Gibraltar. The Rock had been captured by the Royal Navy in 1704 and had been the home of the British Mediterranean Fleet since the island of Minorca had been taken by the French in 1756. One hundred and nine metres above sea level, San Roque is an eyrie from which it is possible to see down to Gibraltar Bay and, on a clear day, even across to North Africa. There are few more dramatic locations on the whole Atlantic seaboard of Europe. A vast expanse of sky meets the swirling waters and uncertain winds that characterize the convergence of two oceans and the division of two continents. To the east lies the Mediterranean; to the west, the Atlantic; to the north, the Iberian Peninsula; and to the south, Africa. For the Romans and Greeks this was the very edge of the world, the Pillars of Hercules, but by the 1750s Gibraltar had become the centre of a world encompassed, and contested, by European navies. Today it is still a strategic key to the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia. It is one of the most emotive places on earth and drips with weight of history. It is particularly fitting, therefore, that the events that were to follow would live up to the drama of their location.

  Boscawen and his fellow officers were pulled ashore from their warships in a flotilla of longboats, leaving wakes that reached from their mother-ships like the tentacles of a sea creature projecting British sea power ashore. Once they had landed, the men wound their way up the dusty track that led to the settlement perching at the top of the hill. As his men filed in to the evening party, Boscawen posted a sentry to keep watch over the British fleet lying in the calm of Gibraltar Bay. For despite the genial surroundings and the hospitality of their Spanish host, the British officers were uneasy.

  Their purpose in the Mediterranean had recently taken a decisive turn. Britain had been at war with France for three years. They had failed to come to any peaceful agreement over the extent and location of the boundaries between British and French possessions in North America and along the banks of the Ohio River, tension had spilled over into armed conflict. The war that followed, known as the Seven Years War, was the first conflict in human history to be fought around the globe. By the summer of 1759 both sides had had successes, but British expertise in amphibious operations had begun to turn the tide. In the first few weeks of the war, however, the French had besieged and captured the island of Minorca, the only British naval base deep in the Mediterranean, from where the Royal Navy had been able to monitor closely the activities of the French Mediterranean Fleet at Toulon. The loss of Minorca was a terrible blow to the British, both practically and psychologically, and a tide of professional and public outrage at the political and military lethargy that had led to its surrender erupted in the winter of 1756: the government fell and was replaced by a new administration under William Pitt, and George Byng, the admiral held responsible for failing to relieve the besieged garrison at Minorca, was court-martialled and shot on his own quarterdeck.

  Since then, British troops had enjoyed great success in Canada, capturing the Louisbourg fortress on Cape Breton Island and Quebec itself in 1759. In the Caribbean the important French sugar island of Guadeloupe was captured, and the French had been driven from the valuable Coromandel Coast of India by a combined British naval and army force. Together, these British successes drove the French to one final desperate measure which would solve all their problems at a stroke by giving them sufficient bargaining power to reclaim their lost territories and end the war with some dignity. In early 1759 the French Foreign Minister, the duc de Choiseul, drew up plans to invade Britain. However, the French navy would first have to unite its Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets, and this became the central focus of the war in the coming weeks. Once united, the ships from Brest and Toulon would give the French numerical superiority over the British Channel Fleet and Western Squadron and would, in theory at least, enable them to seize control of the Channel or distract the British long enough to launch the invasion.

  There were, in fact, two separate plans. Either the main French force would come into the Channel and ‘distract’ the British Channel Fleet while a smaller force escorted the invading armies to their appointed destinations, or the entire combined Brest and Toulon Squadrons would act as the escort. In both instances, the French armies, collected in two significant forces at either end of the Channel, would have to be landed. The force to the west, now encamped around the shores of the inland sea in southern Brittany known as the Morbihan, was commanded by the duc d’Aiguillon, whose force was to be embarked and then escorted around Ireland to land in the Clyde estuary in Scotland. The naval escort would then sail to the other major French force, based at Ostend, and would land it in Essex, by the mouths of the Crouch and the Blackwater. Meanwhile, a final and smaller force based at Dunkirk would be transported to Ireland.